Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. My name is Dawit Ghebremedhin. I'm an associate in the healthcare group at JP Morgan, and today I have the pleasure of introducing the Orion Pharma team. Today, joining us is President and CEO, Dr. Liisa Hurme. As a quick reminder on format, this will be a 20 minute presentation, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A, so please save any questions for the end of the presentation. And with that, I'll pass it over to Liisa. Thank you.
Thank you for the introduction, and good afternoon, on my behalf as well, and welcome to hear Orion Pharma Equity story. First of all, I of course want to thank JP Morgan for the opportunity to present here today. The usual disclaimers, here we go, and then I'll start with some basics of Orion Pharma. I understand that we might have here people who are not that well or who are not that familiar with Orion Pharma. Company was established 1917. It's headquartered in Finland, very diversified. You will see when I describe our divisions. Currently, we have 4,000 employees, of which, say, 2,900 are in Finland. Reason for that, that so big share of the employees is in Finland, is that we have all our manufacturing sites in Finland, so that's it.
But that, on the other hand, we have more than 1,000 people in our 35 countries across the globe, mostly in our sales organizations, but also in our back office, procurement, IM, and other functions in India and China. Last year, this sounds a bit late, kind of, strange to talk about, actually, 2024, we made EUR 1.5 billion revenue and EUR 470 million operating profit. In our research, we are focused in oncology and pain, and I will talk more about the pipeline as we move forward. Here are our five divisions. It might look quite diversified, as I said in the beginning, but, when you hear the story, it's not as diversified. I'll start with the smaller divisions: our branded products, generics, animal health, and Fermion. Those form a very solid, stable business for Orion.
The oldest part of the company is actually the generics and consumer health. As for so many other mid-sized European companies, that's how companies have usually started out. There, we focus on Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. Branded products are products that we have once developed, innovated by Orion, but have lost their exclusivity at some point. But we've selected those of our former innovative or proprietary products that still hold a significant brand value, like Stalevo for Parkinson's disease, the whole Easyhaler inhaler family, and some women's health products. In this segment, since we see that they are worth to promote, we have very long-term customer relationship, and we are still building these portfolios as we go along. We in-license all the time, so-called bolt-ins or tuck-in products, to grow these portfolios and to be able to serve patients and doctors in a better way.
These products we sell by ourselves across Europe and Asia Pacific. Animal health, a very much smaller business, very global, both livestock and companion animals, and Fermion supplies API for all of our own divisions, but also for many other pharma companies. This is what I would call a base business, solid, good cash flow, but the innovative medicines is the one that is creating growth for us now, especially with Nubeqa. That's a molecule called darolutamide that Orion has innovated originally, and where we partnered with Bayer in two thousand and fourteen, so that Bayer has rights to sell the product and around the globe, and we co-promote together in Europe. From here on in the presentation, I will fully focus on innovative medicines.
We have a very strong track record from the recent years on our financial performance. We had a few, a bit more plateaued years when Stalevo lost its exclusivity, as you can see here in the slide. But since 2022, we clearly picked up the growth, and we are on that growth trajectory as we speak. Especially when you look at the year-to-date numbers from the first nine months last year and compare them to the first nine months of 2024, you can see that the base business, and now when I talk about base business, I do include Nubeqa in this one. Nubeqa royalties is growing healthy, plus 20%. Then when you look at the operating profit comparison from the same time period, it's even more significant, close to 60% growth.
You can also see a very typical pattern that for us as we work with our partners, years may differ significantly from each other due to milestones that we get, either triggered by certain sales or certain development stages. Like last year or in 2024, we received EUR 130 million of milestones. So sometimes it's difficult to compare the years, so we tend to look at the base business, the sales of our products. Here are our financial objectives until 2028. This is a great framework for the company to develop further, to create growth and build pipeline.
We've stated that we will grow at least 8% in our revenue cumulatively, on average, until 2028, which will mean that there are probably years, as we've seen, when we grow much more than 8%, but there might be also years when it's less than 8%, and we've also said that we will grow even faster with our profit, and I think this is a very strong statement from any company, but it also gives us guidance how we run our operations, and all this with the equity ratio of more than 50% and return of equity of more than 25%. This also serves as a good guidance that you at least try to make very wise decisions how you invest your money.
We are known to pay dividend, and we have capped the payout ratio from 50%-100%, but paying annually growing dividend. What are the key themes for Orion as an investment case? I think we as a company, we can offer it all when it comes to pharmaceutical industry. We can offer innovation. We have excellent track record for a company of our size for innovation with Nubeqa and opevesostat, which is already also in phase III for prostate cancer with MSD, and the whole pipeline, which I will share with you within a minute, and definitely the growth trajectory, as I showed to you. On the other hand, we also provide stability. We all know that there is a certain risk embedded in innovation when you invest into new development projects and new molecules.
So the rest of the company, with branded products and generics and animal health, provides a kind of a stability to balance out those risks. And of course, dividend is one feature in our equity story. And regarding the capital allocation, we have very clear priorities there as well. First, innovation, our own R&D, our own pipeline and molecules. Dividend, then capacity building and maintenance. When you saw our growth figures, it's very clear that we need to invest in our capacity, and we do it all the time, investing into our API manufacturing regarding Nubeqa and darolutamide, investing into our finished goods manufacturing, and now not only for innovative medicines and Nubeqa, but also for branded products like Easyhaler portfolio, which grows with two-digit numbers.
Then in licensing, I already mentioned that we do all the time in licensing to our different portfolios, either single products or product portfolios, to be able to serve the market and the patients in the best possible way. Acquisitions are an option for us. We have clear strategy to become more global company. It's been a long journey, as you saw, more than hundred years to come from Finland to become a Nordic company, to become a European company, then Europe and Asia Pacific, but we need to be more global, and we've actually done a lot of actions already regarding that. We've expanded our R&D outside Finland. We have wonderful scientists in Finland, which is clearly the proof of that, is Nubeqa and all the products in our pipeline.
But we now have established a site in Cambridge, U.K., for the development of biologics, and also a site in Cambridge, U.S., for the clinical operations and regulatory operations. So becoming more global is to building competencies within research and development, but I think the final stage would definitely be to have a commercial footprint in United States. And this was a long route to come back to the acquisitions. I often get a question that then, "What is the target? What, what would you then be acquiring?" And that would, anything that we would be acquiring would need to support the globalization strategy and innovation. So the most straightforward answer would be a commercial platform in U.S. But of course, timing, when would that happen? You need two to tango and on the right target. So, don't hold your breath.
I think, it might still take a while to get there, but this is clearly also on our list. Now to our clinical pipeline. I'm proud to say that Orion has never had this long list of development projects, and you can also see that it's very oncology-focused. Before I go through those projects, I mention two that are not related to oncology, which you may all pick up quite quickly there. There is a molecule that we have developed in early 2000 called levosimendan for heart failure. Our American partner, Tenax, is developing that for the pulmonary hypertension in certain patient group, and that's kind of a life cycle management for that molecule, but it's not our focus area. I'm really, really glad that levosimendan gets a new life and helps patients in that indication.
Back to the oncology. We have studies ongoing with Nubeqa, like ARASTEP, for prostate cancer, biochemically recurrent prostate cancer. There is also a study called DASL-HiCaP for even earlier use of Nubeqa with prostate cancer patients in a neoadjuvant setting. So there is still a lot more to come regarding Nubeqa. The next prostate cancer molecule is opevesostat. It actually comes from the same source, from the same laboratory than darolutamide, but it's, as I usually call it, it's a hardcore treatment for hormonal cancers because it blocks all the steroid hormones. When you have a prostate cancer, the cancer itself, the tumor, usually develops mutations and can kind of escape androgen receptor inhibitors and use the precursors of testosterone to feed itself.
But when you really block all the steroid production, there won't be any precursors even for testosterone, so you really can, at least in theory, block the whole tumor growth. Here we have two phase III studies ongoing by MSD, another dear partner to us, and we are looking for a readout in 2028 from these studies. And just to maybe it's good to also explain here that these are by no means cannibalizing Nubeqa, but they are targeted to the later stages of prostate cancer. With opevesostat, there are also studies, phase II studies, ongoing for women's cancer. It's all only natural that MSD would like to also see how would this kind of mechanism of action work for female cancers.
With any sense, it should work there as well, and there is also a huge unmet need. CYPIDES is a phase II study which is still ongoing. OMAHA three and four were based on the results of CYPIDES study when they were started, but of course, we are obligated to continue the study as long as we have patients that benefit from this drug. And then to kind of, I would say, the next wave of oncology in Orion is ODM-212. That's a TEAD inhibitor. We were happy to announce that we have started phase II studies in the end of last year, or phase II study with this molecule in two indications, malignant pleural mesothelioma and EHE, epithelioid hemangioendothelioma. I'm not going to repeat that.
I will only say EHE, to make it easy for myself and for you. These are very niche, oncological indications, and there, the trial, is based on the only use of this molecule. I will come back to, later on to this molecule and where it also has and could have potential in addition to these two indications. We also have biologics. I mentioned the Cambridge site that we've established. We have biologics in our candidate, preclinical stage, where the aim is to push at least two of those into clinical pipeline, during this year. And those would be bispecifics. But as you can see here, there are other modalities as well under work. And here, back to the ODM-212.
On the right side, or actually on your left side, is what I already discussed, the EHE and the mesothelioma and the monotherapy use of this molecule. The real potential for this molecule actually comes from the properties of it. You could combine it. We've already seen in phase I, it has a very nice safety profile. We've seen some preliminary efficacy data, and we of course know the half-life of the molecule, and we've understood that this could be combined with some existing cancer treatments. The mechanism of action is such that it could prolong the use of current treatments, and thus be a very good solution for many different cancers and many different treatments. And even deeper to our journey in oncology. I think Orion is now clearly a company focused fully on oncology.
We do carry out research in pain also, but currently we don't have any assets in clinical development, but there are several that we hope to see in the clinical development at some later stage, but if you look at this journey, I think it's getting faster and faster. We are really moving fast forward. We started out in two thousand and five, looking at prostate cancer. It's a long story. It all started with hormone receptors. Started the darolutamide studies in two thousand and eleven, in phase one and phase two. Then quite soon after that, or some years after that, studies with opevesostat, started the immuno-oncology in two thousand and nineteen, and then here on the lower row, you can see how the Nubeqa story then evolved with different segments of prostate cancer.
And all the time, we are introducing new modalities like ADCs in our research, and now also the TEAD inhibitors, as you can see here, and hopefully next year or this year, also the biologics. So I think this is a prime example how Orion, when we decide to do something and build the competencies, how we are able to do it, and we've also been able to show that we can do it. Now, back to numbers. We gave last night, U.S. time, we gave out our outlook for this year a bit earlier than we usually do, and this is clearly driven by Nubeqa. We have made several scenarios with our partner, Bayer, and we see that it has a higher potential than we originally thought.
And we see that the potential for Orion in the form of royalties would be at least EUR 1 billion at its peak. That's a long-term vision, and getting back to year 2026, this year, so we estimate that our net sales would be EUR 1.9 billion-EUR 2.1 billion. Clearly, driven by Nubeqa, but let's remember that all of our businesses are doing very well. An operating profit range would be from EUR 550 million-EUR 750 million. I'm stopping here, so if you have any questions at this time, so now it would be a good time.
Thank you, Liisa. I can kick it off here with a couple of questions I had. Delving into the in-licensing strategy, I'd love to hear more about what kind of assets you guys are looking at, whether it's acquiring or in-licensing across the different businesses.
A very good question because all the different businesses have very different focus. In innovative medicines, we are clearly looking for to in-license molecules in phase one in phase two in oncology for solid tumors, something that we know something about. I think that's a very kind of how would I say? A long-term strategy for Orion that we are very science-driven, so we tend to stick to the mechanisms of actions that we do know very well, or when we then start with another modality or mechanism of action, we try to get as deep as we can there. So my answer is that we are looking at clinical stage assets, especially in oncology, solid tumors, in the mechanism of action areas that we know well.
We've actually done a lot of in-licensing during the past year, but for the research and discovery stage, but now it's time to move forward for the clinical assets, then it's a very different story when we look at the other divisions. For the branded products, we have also made several licensing deals, especially for the Parkinson's disease. That would mean there are different type of combinations of existing molecules, different type of dosage forms that would be easier for patients to administer. So that's not really innovative, but it's, I think, as valuable as the innovative medicines, if you look at it from the patient perspective, and for the generics, we do in-licensing all the time. That's kind of our how would I put it?
Development machine, so we in-license a lot of products in all the time from all the parts of the world. I think the latest and the biggest in-licensing deal that we made was for the recombinant albumin. As for the generics, we are building value-based or value-added product portfolio for hospital products, so recombinant albumin would be a big driver in that portfolio. I hope I answered to your question.
It's great. Thank you. Staying in theme with capital allocation, I'd be curious to hear more about the strategy with paying dividends, as opposed to maybe investing more in R&D.
You would like to hear more about?
The strategy behind paying dividends and this focus and emphasis on it.
Oh, paying dividend.
Correct, yeah.
Yes, it's clear. I think there is a slight change in paying dividend. We have, in the earlier years, paid 100% out, sometimes even more, but I think it's a change in our strategy and reflects the need to invest in the future, that we've now capped it from, or we have a range from 50%-100% payout ratio. So that clearly gives us room, differently from the previous years, to invest, if needed, into acquisitions.
And something you had mentioned during the presentation was the emphasis on globalization. I'd love to hear more about international expansion. Any points of emphasis, things you'd like to highlight, what you're excited about?
I'm generally excited about that because that really gives us more, we can gather more competencies. I mentioned the Cambridge biologics development site, the clinical development site here in U.S., in Boston. Also, last year we opened subsidiary in Japan. We've been in many of the Asia-Pacific countries, but that was a new opening for us, and actually, when you asked about in-licensing, that's one of the countries where we are really looking to get more products in our Parkinson's portfolio. I think that's the biggest things. Those are the biggest things to date regarding the globalization, but the real big thing will be to be able to commercialize our own molecules and products in United States.
Awesome. I'd love to open it up to the audience for any questions.
Thank you for that exposition. A flavor of your outlook on pain?
Thank you. There was a question regarding our pain research and flavor of outlook to our pain portfolio. Yes, indeed, we do have several molecules in research stage and in our pain portfolio. We had a molecule earlier in development for the pain, for acute and chronic pain, unfortunately, that failed. But, I think that at latest in 2027, we should be able to bring new molecules into clinical pipeline also for pain.
Thank you. If no other questions, thanks everyone for attending, and thank you, Liisa and team.
Thank you.
A pleasure. Have a wonderful rest of your day.
Thank you!